Ragnar Frisch Quotes

It is one of man's curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them.

Children and scientists share an outlook on life. 'If I do this, what will happen?' is both the motto of the child at play and the defining refrain of the physical scientist.

I made a film that was impossible to make, but I didn't know it was impossible, and that's how I was able to do it.

I have certainly enjoyed puzzles since an early age, and things that look like impossible things are often particularly intriguing.

Climbing is all about freedom, the freedom to go beyond all the rules and take a chance, to experience something new, to gain insight into human nature.

We’re taught to do things the right way. But if you want to discover something that other people haven’t, you need to do things the wrong way. Initiate a failure by doing something that’s very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path. It’s exciting, actually. To me, solving problems is a bit like a drug. You’re on it, and you can’t get off.

I hope many of you will be people that question why things are and why we have to do them the way we have always done them. I hope you will take some risks, exert some real leadership on issues, and if you will, dance along the edge of the roof as you continue for life.

I need you to be clever, Bean. I need you to think of solutions to problems we haven't seen yet. I want you to try things that no one has ever tried because they're absolutely stupid.

Human beings thrive on action. Stagnation does not wear well with us. We are said to have our origins as hunter-gatherers. We run and we chase. We are problem-solvers. We must be continuously tested and we continuously test ourselves. And it will not end until our lives end because of life itself.

People love solving puzzles, and you always love it when somebody smarter than you is solving puzzles.

Crazy ideas sometimes work, and the technological society that we have is built on a foundation of those crazy ideas that work.

Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.

It was a crazy idea. But, as usual, that’s all Percy had.

The Wright brothers didn't contemplate the staying on the ground of things. Alexander Graham Bell didn't contemplate the noncommunication of things. Thomas Edison didn't contemplate the darkness of things. In order to float an idea into your reality, you must be willing to do a somersault into the unconceivable and land on your feet, contemplating what you want instead of what you don't have.

All human beings are entrepreneurs.

Ideas that most people derided as ridiculous have produced the best outcomes. Don't do the obvious thing.

The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.

Leaders have to figure it out when there is no road map.

Solving problems should be a joy, a welcome challenge to our creativity.

Choose a challenge instead of competence

If the unusual never happened there would be no difference in people and then there wouldn't be any fun in life. The game would become merely a matter of addition and subtraction. It would make of us a race of bookkeepers with plodding minds. It's the guessing that develops a man's brain power.

I'm widest awake as a writer doing something new, engaged in a process I'm not sure I can finish, generating at the edge of my powers. Some people bungee jump; I write.

You jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down.

Nature does not capriciously scatter her secrets as golden gifts to lazy pets and luxurious darlings, but imposes tasks when she presents opportunities, and uplifts him whom she would inform. The apple that she drops at the feet of Newton is but a coy invitation to follow her to the stars.

I am not limiting myself to theories, so I never question the rightness to my approach.